How to Avoid Being “Friend Zoned”

The Friend Zone is often thought of as the penalty box of dat­ing and occurs when a woman cat­e­go­rizes you as a friend rather than a poten­tial lover.

For most women these cat­e­gories are mutu­ally exclu­sive, which means that it can be very dif­fi­cult to get out of the Friend Zone once inside and the effort required usu­ally isn’t worth it.

Of course there is noth­ing wrong with being friends with a woman, and it does have its perks. For exam­ple you can expand your social cir­cle by get­ting to know her friends. However, if you’re look­ing for more than just friend­ship then this will be of lit­tle con­so­la­tion and “Just­friendis­tan” will seem a very bleak and unfor­giv­ing place.

So, is it pos­si­ble to escape the Friend Zone once you’ve been “friend zoned?” And, a bet­ter ques­tion, how do you avoid the Friend Zone in the first place?

Now Be Honest…

When that beau­ti­ful girl who you were crazy about told you, “I’d rather just be friends,” did you say, “Okay sure, I’m cool with that,” in hope that she would some­day change her mind?

Well, did she ever change her mind?

Prob­a­bly not.

In fact, she might have told you that she was “not ready to date” or that she had “just come out of a really bad rela­tion­ship,” only to turn around soon after and start dat­ing some guy who just came from out of nowhere.

Are you tired of hav­ing this hap­pen to you? Wouldn’t it be great if you could stop land­ing in the dreaded Friend Zone and start being “that guy who came out of nowhere?”

Cut Your Losses and Move On

What you have to real­ize is that the Friend Zone is like the mafia, very hard to get out. It’s vir­tu­ally a lost cause because the more effort you put in to weasel, bribe or nego­ti­ate your way out, the more needy and des­per­ate you’ll seem.

This will have the exact oppo­site of the desired effect, only serv­ing to make you even less sex­u­ally attrac­tive to her, thus seal­ing your fate and lock­ing you into the Friend Zone for good.

Look, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if you’re still enter­tain­ing fan­tasies of her wak­ing up one day to the real­iza­tion of how fool­ish she’s been all this time because the love of her life has been right there in front of her all along, then you’re in for a very long wait.

Don’t make the mis­take of being that “nice guy” who goes shop­ping, watches sit­coms and gos­sips with her. The guy who she calls when she wants a favor, or when she needs to let off steam about some douche she’s dating.

You have more self-dignity than to let­ her rub salt into your wounds, don’t you? Well, don’t you?

How to Get Out of the Friend Zone

Like most guys, you’ll prob­a­bly find it hard to accept when I say that you’re not going to win her over. Instead of cut­ting your losses, you’ll stub­bornly con­tinue fight­ing for her affections.

So rather than have you do some­thing you’ll regret, I’ll admit that there is one very small chance of get­ting out of the Friend Zone, but it’s not easy. And the longer you’ve been in the Friend Zone, the harder it will be to get out. It could take months, or even years.

In order to push that cos­mic reset but­ton in her head, you need to make some dras­tic changes in your life and gen­er­ate under­ly­ing sex­ual tension.

Shal­low as it sounds, her desire for you will increase when she sees that you’re desired by other women. So as of right now, stop mes­sag­ing her and stop being at her beck and call. Get some dis­tance between you by pur­su­ing other inter­ests and by meet­ing and dat­ing other girls.

Guys try­ing to escape the Friend Zone seem to for­get is that there are 3.5 bil­lion women on this planet. I don’t doubt that she’s “spe­cial”, but there are other spe­cial girls out there who’d be very happy to be in a rela­tion­ship with you. You need to get over your oneitis and move on by adopt­ing an “abun­dance mindset.”

Once you’ve dis­tanced your­self from her, it’s time to work on your­self. This means improv­ing your style, get­ting in shape and gen­er­ally becom­ing the best pos­si­ble ver­sion of yourself.

You want that when she sees you again, she sees the new con­fi­dent, non-needy and attrac­tive you. Let her see that you’ve moved on and that you’re doing just fine with­out her.

She should think to her­self, “Wow, he’s look­ing good and he’s really got it together. What was I think­ing? Do I really want to risk los­ing this guy?” Then when you notice her signs of inter­est, it’s up to you to man up and make your move.

At this point it’s vital you make it very clear that your inten­tions are of a sex­ual nature and not pla­tonic. Adopt the atti­tude that if she turns you down it’s her loss because you’re a man of options and are not overly invested in her.

The more she feels that she could lose your affec­tion to some­one else, the bet­ter your chances of get­ting out the Friend Zone and into her “eroge­nous zone.”

Why Guys Get Put in The Friend Zone

Instead of ask­ing how to get out of the Friend Zone, a bet­ter ques­tion is to ask your­self how to avoid the Friend Zone in the first place. Here are two things you must start doing right now:

Prove to her that you aren’t like most men

Man up and make your desires clear

Let’s start with prov­ing to her that you are not like most men. First, ask your­self this…

What Are Most Men Doing to Attract Her?

In any field, you can iden­tify true geniuses by one vari­able: they do things dif­fer­ently than the major­ity of peo­ple. This is espe­cially true in the dat­ing world. The more attrac­tive a woman is, the more men she has com­pet­ing for her atten­tion. And what do you think most of them are doing?

They are going out of their way try­ing to impress and please her by becom­ing the kind of man that she expects them to become. They are mak­ing them­selves avail­able to her 24/7 and going com­pletely over-the-top to win her affec­tion. They agree with every­thing she says and let her have her way, even when she behaves like a spoilt brat.

Let’s Look at Things From Her Point of View

Imag­ine that you had a dozen peo­ple com­pet­ing for your atten­tion who were all doing nice things for you. Is there any way that you would be able to give all of these peo­ple your atten­tion? And how would you choose between them?

Women are far more intu­itive than most guys give them credit for. They know when you’re bull­shit­ting or try­ing to manip­u­late them into bed with your “nice­ness.” And it get’s tir­ing and old very quickly.

Imag­ine how hard it must be for a beau­ti­ful woman to meet a gen­uine, down-to-earth kind of guy among all the manip­u­la­tive creeps:

A man who has his own opin­ions and is will­ing to dis­agree with her instead of sti­fling con­ver­sa­tion by always try­ing to please her by say­ing the right thing.

A man who has his own life and doesn’t always change his plans to make him­self avail­able to her at the drop of a hat.

A man who doesn’t go out of his way to impress her by spend­ing lots of money win­ing and din­ing her or show­er­ing her with gifts.

Can you see how that would be a refresh­ing change for her? Hope­fully you’re begin­ning to under­stand why women reject men who go over the top to win their affec­tions. These guys are a dime a dozen and it doesn’t sex­u­ally excite beau­ti­ful women because they’re bored of it.

As a defense, and because they don’t want to hurt anybody’s feel­ings, women have mas­tered the art of keep­ing their would-be suit­ors at arms length by Friend Zon­ing them.

Mean­while, the guy who comes along and doesn’t change his behav­ior for her, who doesn’t shower her with spe­cial atten­tion, who teases her when she behaves out of line, who has a bit of a bad boy atti­tude and per­haps even seems slightly dis­in­ter­ested, this guy has her eat­ing out of his hand!

Why? Because he gives her a sense of vari­ety, excite­ment and adven­ture. And because he demon­strates high sta­tus and strength of char­ac­ter by main­tain­ing his iden­tity, while other men are busy wrap­ping them­selves around her finger.

What women really want from a man is secu­rity and reli­a­bil­ity. Sub­con­sciously she rea­sons that if you allow your­self to be manip­u­lated by her, with­out stand­ing up for your­self, then what are the chances that you can be relied on to stand strong and pro­vide her with secu­rity in the long term?

So, How Can You Stand Out?

Before you go out on another date, stop and make a list of all the ways in which you’re going over the top to attract women. All those things you’re doing in the hope of gain­ing a woman’s approval. If these things are out of char­ac­ter for you, then why are you doing them? If it’s sim­ply for the sake of impress­ing her, she’s prob­a­bly smart enough to know that.

Not only that, she prob­a­bly wishes you had the con­fi­dence to believe that you’re good enough the way you are, with­out putting her on a pedestal, chang­ing your opin­ions to gain her approval, and spoil­ing her with gifts and favors to com­pen­sate for your per­ceived shortcomings.

Until you’re hon­est with your­self about these things, you’ll never dis­play the “take it or leave it” atti­tude that’s nec­es­sary to attract qual­ity women. By hav­ing the con­fi­dence to stand up for the things you believe in and refus­ing to allow your­self to be manip­u­lated, you take the first step in prov­ing to her that you’re a great catch!

Don’t for­get that women thrive on emo­tion. The “nice guy” who is afraid of offend­ing her will play it safe and elicit a neu­tral reac­tion. The prob­lem is that neu­tral reac­tions are bor­ing and they never incite emo­tion. With­out emo­tion, there can be no emo­tional con­nec­tion and no attraction.

Man Up and Make Your Desires Clear

One of the biggest mis­takes men make with women is to wait too long to make a move. You need to demon­strate your desire for her early on, or she’ll clas­sify you as a friend and not a poten­tial lover.

Women like a mas­cu­line man who makes his inten­tions clear and is not afraid to act on his sex­ual desire. At the very lat­est when she starts mak­ing signs that she likes you, you need to take the bull by the horns or your oppor­tu­nity could be lost forever.

I know it’s not always easy, but you must be pre­pared to stick your neck out and let her know that you’re sex­u­ally attracted to her. Stud­ies show that female arousal is some­what nar­cis­sis­tic in nature and that women are turned on by being wanted and desired. In gen­eral, the more phys­i­cally assertive you are when pur­su­ing a woman, the more aroused she becomes.

If you’re nat­u­rally a shy guy, I know it can be dif­fi­cult to be sex­u­ally forth­right and lead the inter­ac­tion, but this is exactly what’s nec­es­sary if you want to avoid being rel­e­gated to the dreaded Friend Zone by women.

I'm not naturally good with women. Most of what I know I learned the hard way. I know how it feels to be too shy to approach, to get stuck in the "Friend Zone" and have girls flake on me. Check out this embarrassing post about How I Got My First Slap →